


The Skin I Live In

by ssabriel



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Inspired by Cyberpunk 2077, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28761945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssabriel/pseuds/ssabriel
Summary: Farewell is slow, like a recovery from a disease.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand & Male V, Johnny Silverhand/Male V
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	The Skin I Live In

**Author's Note:**

> *This happened after the Temperance ending is triggered. I am Chinese native and this fanfic was originally written in Chinese. Some of the expressions might not fit the English language habit, for that I apologies in advance.

"Cold"

Johnny was cold, as cold as a idiot carrying a bucket of ice water in the midwinter and pouring him from head to toe. He shrank on the small steel bed in the rented room and wrapped himself tightly with those broken beddings, but he still trembled like a mourning dog. Although he didn't expect the heating of this rented apartment from the beginning, he didn't know if V, that Poot little shit, had put too many holes in his body as a mercenary, and he couldn't hold it any more heat. Coupled with the role of the holy relic a while ago, the good foundation is almost gone. Although the nano-chip transforms this body from the most basic genetic and immune system level to coordinate with him, it only requires physical fitness. It takes a little effort to recover to the best condition.

He miserably thought about his mechanical prosthesis. Although it’s an old crap, there is no synthetic sympathetic nerve installed on it. Except that the pressure sensor can simulate the basic sense of touch, it will not freeze the hand even if it is used for masturbating the ice sculpture. The implantation of biomechanical prostheses in V’s body is different. Their sensors are even more developed than normal human organs. Johnny can feel these tiny metal implanted fibers like thin snakes, eating away his leftover few body temperature.

The feeling of manipulating the body with the conscious and actually using the body is still different. To be honest, Johnny didn’t expect V to suffer so much because of himself: the lungs are not good anymore, breathe out to compare his old crappy smoker lungs of more than 20 years were still uncomfortable; the joints creaked with pain after a little effort; the pair of intelligent prosthetic eyes was completely confused at this moment, and it didn't know that he should adjust the focus based on the visual signal that Johnny’s or V’s brain was accustomed to receiving to. It simply went on strike. The vision was unclear and resigned. Except that Johnny mistakenly used the penis enlargement gel as jam during breakfast on the bread and put it in the mouth, the consequences also included endless migraines.

This wasn't the worst. The worst thing was that Johnny discovered that that thing, yes, that thing of V’s had actually lost its function too. He didn't know when it started, but he was sure that V had covered it up so well that he hadn't noticed it before. At first, he and V will have sex when the everybody’s in good spirits. The biochip can perfectly simulate the state of the body receiving external tactile information and send it to the brain. Johnny doesn’t need to do anything extra or instruct V on how to touch himself and open up himself with his hands (of course, if necessary, the erotic passages are not counted), as long as he "touches" the opponent like a normal person, the opponent will react. This was once Johnny's excuse for himself. After all, he couldn't fuck anyone else other than V, right? But from a certain point in time, this small activity between them stopped. Johnny thought that V was carried away by his ambition and other stuff that was going on, but now he understands that there is other bitterness behind it.

It was midday, and there was a distant and echoing clanging sound from under the skyscraper. It was the stall owners who had rushed to the morning market to collect their cars and return. The pale and feeble winter sun through the blinds did not bring any warmth to the room. Johnny sat up in despair, and tremblingly went to the kitchen to boil hot water to make tea for himself like an eighty-year-old man, so that his empty stomach would not tear so much. His hands covered on the rusty metal handle of the kettle, and the estimation of that shape from under his palm was dull and vague, as weak as wearing a pair of thick cotton oven gloves.

He thought he could never get used to it.

"Rejection reaction"

The feeling of "never gonna get used to it" that was entangled in the heart and permeated into life, eventually faded slowly on the level of Johnny's senses. The first two months are the most difficult, like experiencing a large-scale chronic organ rejection reaction, endless inflammation, low-grade fever, vomiting, and insomnia at night. His weight fell below one hundred and thirty pounds, worse than the last few weeks before V's conscious life came to an end. Had it not been for his alcoholic neighbor’s son, Steve, who had given him a few meals, took him as a poor bastard suffering from cyberpsychosis, he might have done the worst he could do to V and became the biggest asshole: Just took control of this body and die.

The illness probably wind down the spirit, Johnny even calmed down, answering those stupid questions about guitar chords and strumming tempo that Steve had always raised, and kid was so excited that he came over to bring Johnny food every day. Later, these symptoms gradually alleviated and even healed. Johnny gradually became proficient in using this body. The somatosensory and tactile sensations have been adjusted to a relatively harmonious state by the chip. However, Johnny felt that he was like an old bitch of Jig Jig Street about to be abandoned by the unicorn she hooked, and starting to become unwontedly intranquil. It's like an invisible thread slipping out of the back of his head. Yes, it's this feeling, a sense of being betrayed and abandoned by something important.

During the period when the rejection symptoms were the most severe, Johnny didn't feel this way. He accepted to the greatest extent the fact that those symptoms would accompany him for the rest of his life. It was an atonement to the hapless little shit in a sense, and it would also make Johnny sleep more at ease at night.

However, when he prepared everything, this process stopped abruptly.

At first, he could remember a lot of things before V met him, such as V’s barren childhood of Nomads, the afterglow of sunset on the wasteland cut by the branches of buckthorn and some other scenes that Johnny was not familiar with; In the ignorant and straightforward puberty of V's which is bound to be ridiculed by him now, V uses some kind of almost self-destructive polarization to determine whether a person is trustworthy, and after that, the inevitable frustration suppressed to the sore laryngeal. These memories are not just showing their sounds and pictures from the perspective of a bystander, but a large pack of colorful emotions and awkward, rough, messy mental shocks that are unfolded towards Johnny.

Johnny read them repeatedly from his memory. It was an emotional heroin, and during the time he was lingering on them, Johnny felt that V was still alive.

Until one day Johnny was going through a familiar road to look for Victor to examine the prosthesis, only to find that those winding alleys unconsciously led him into a dead end full of small flyers of prostitution and illegal implantation. In any case, he couldn’t find Victor's clinic anymore, and he realized that these memories are being corrected little by little, being treated as a kind of wrong cerebral cortex cells by his body, V's body, slowly disappearing.

This series of changes made the old rock star irritable, but he was unable to vent his anger. This is an inherent and repressive sense of betrayal. V left regardless of his persuasion—he had never listened to him much anyway—and now even the memories that he could have been ruminating have slowly withdrawn. V just wanted to get the fuck out of his head so bad isn’t it!

Although deep down in Johnny’s heart he knows more than anyone that all this is the work of this evil piece of metal carried his own conscious, but just like before, overslept in the morning, V’s fault, slipped while walking, V’s fault, pissed on hand by accident in the toilet, V’s fault, Johnny still habitually blames things to V’s head. This is a malicious joke between him and that kid, he refuses to give up this one last privilege.

"Tombstone"

Maybe even Johnny himself didn't expect that the first thing he did after regaining consciousness from this body and returning to the safe area was to call to order a tombstone. The craftsman on the other end of the phone was stunned by what he said. In these days, people's histories were digitised and uploaded into the electronic cemetery. No one would make a tombstone. But Johnny doesn't care, he just wants a big fucking tombstone. Because of his perseverance, he did end up with a big fucking tombstone, blank.

The black stone that made this tombstone was dug from a mining area in the middle of nowhere. No matter what saber or shovel is used, not a single scratch, it is as stubborn as someone’s fucking head. In the end, Johnny could only use the pistol to punch a series of bullet holes in it, forming a huge crooked “V”. Then he called a trailer and asked them to take the tombstone to the abandoned oil field where his own bones were buried. The oil field was far away from the city, and the tow truck driver agreed and would take it there after he had finished the order for a whole day.

After finishing these things, Johnny called a cab and went to the old apartment of V’s in the Little China. There is no difficulty in entering the locked door with the biometric technology. Behind the door is a kind of loneliness characteristic of the long-standing empty space, as if the friction of dust in the air will make a rustling sound. The temperature in the room was very low, and the cat ran away from the open window. Unlike humans, this animal knows how to survive, and one of the important things is not to maintain too deep feelings with other people. He looked around here. The door of the storage room was open recklessly. There were a few bottles of energy drinks with the lid open on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The computer screen was also on. Johnny stepped forward to check it —The rent reminder email sent by Super Skyscraper Property Management last month.

The evidences are everywhere that the apartment owner's life has come to an abrupt end. He picked up the convenient bag by the door, packed some clothes in the closet and the bottles and cans on the sink, went to V's bedside and looked at it, and picked up a skull carved with Mexican patterns from the bookshelf. Throw the ornaments into the bag. The bed was very clean, except for a black ashtray and a pornographic magazine. He also took these two things. Then, Johnny called the property management office of the super skyscraper according to the information in the email and checked-out this apartment.

When he came to the oil field, the sky was completely dark. The terrain is low-lying. You can't see the Night City from a distance. You can only see the afterglow of the city lights on the horizon and hear the sharp noise of the car tires rubbing the asphalt road from distant echoing in the air. The trailer unloaded and left. Obviously, the boulder had been slammed heavily on the ground and dragged to the designated position. The bottom end was covered with dust and turned grayish brown. The string of bullet holes flashed under the moonlight. The tiny gleam was caused by the exposed quartz particles where the stone was broken.

Johnny stood in front of the bulky thing and smoked a cigarette before leaving. On the way back to the city from the highway, he saw the distant silhouette of the Night City like a sleeping giant, and the stratocumulus clouds rolling over it were like its undulating chest. This is a strange city. New materials and high-tech equipment have become a low-cost daily consumption, on the other hand, the duty of street corner lighting is still performed by an old halogen lamp; It allows the soul to leave the body, on the other hand, most people forget how to commemorate death.

“Callus”

Pain is no stranger to mankind. In many movies and books, there will be various descriptions of pain. There are physical descriptions, which are as heavy as a severed limb and as light as paper cutting, and there are also psychological descriptions, such as the pain of departing by life and death. But there is a description of pain that is rarely mentioned by people, if it is not personal experience, it will never resonate: the pain of the string cutting into the fingertip.

Johnny knew that V had lived a life almost like a knife-tip licking blood before. His mercenary life gave him a pair of tough palms, but the moment Johnny touched the electric guitar Steve handed over, he knowing that V never had the opportunity to touch six strings during his hurried adolescence. This is incomprehensible to Johnny, because almost the best guitar players he knows are from the Nomad tribe. When you walk between the yellow sand and the tent, you can hear the melodious six-stringed everywhere. But V somehow completely missed this iron thing that can make a sound. Johnny signaled a solo for Steve, and then hid his trembling fingers behind his back.

Almost like deliberately, Steve came to him again the next day. The feeling of being cut by a string for the first time is unique and remote. Everyone has to experience it one time, or not a single time in his life. And Johnny is experiencing it twice. The feeling at the beginning is amazing, you will mistakenly think that the advice of people with experience is nonsense. But Johnny knew that was not the case. The real torture would come before you realised it.

He picked up the worn-out second-hand guitar, signaled Steve to pay attention, bowed his head and played. His fingertips had started to congestion the night before. When he woke up to make coffee this morning, he almost dropped the cup to the ground when his fingers touched the hot coffee cup. Now, he is using these tortured fingertips that are multiply sensitive to everything, hitting the metal strings of the broken guitar stings that are not uniform in format—some of them are even rusty.

After Steve left, Johnny tried his best to turn his attention elsewhere. But the pain in the fingertips kept twitching towards him with the pumping of blood. It was a peculiar pain that was a mixture of skin and flesh pain, swelling and bruising. It made him feel uncomfortable in doing anything. He kept touching the fingertips of the remaining four fingers with his only uninjured thumb, touching the skin. The place feels not even his own. He raised his hand in front of his eyes and saw that except for the thumb, the remaining fingertips of the two hands were flushed red, and the left hand was even worse, covered with acrossed indentations left by the metal strings, and the edges of the indentations were cyan. The right hand is not much better, because of excessive friction, the fingertips covered with large areas of redness and swelling.

Pain becomes more clearly identifiable in the middle of the sleepless night. Like many lonely residents, Johnny will unconsciously confide his heart to the non-existent object, "Look at it, V, take it as I’m suffering this shit for you." He sat on the bed, putting his hand on his knees, his fingers murmured at him. After a while, he scolded and stood up and went to the kitchen to look for ice cubes.

Time flies, Steve now comes to Johnny almost every day. In Johnny's brain, there are few of V’s old memory left. At the same time, callus was growing on his fingertips and became harder and harder. When he played the electric guitar, it was like a few small hammers hitting the strings.

There is almost no pain anymore, and everything feels numb to touch, like through a thick layer of tape.

"Shadow in the Water"

When this body was better repaired by the chip, Johnny went to drink. How to put it, this is called bad habits hard to change. The first time he took over the wheels of this body to find Rogue, he also drank like hell that night, but, as mentioned earlier, the feeling of wearing the body with pure consciousness is very different from actually owning the body. What he didn't expect was that he would get drunk so fast. If Johnny still had memories from V’s own life in his mind, he would have noticed that V’s vision would start to be distorted and blurred after a cup or two, but Johnny doesn’t have it now. So it was too late when he realise that he was piss drunk.

He crumbled into the elevator, and it took him a long time to find the button to return to the apartment floor. It seemed as if it had been waiting for a century before the elevator started reluctantly with groaning, and returning to the room felt like a distant future. When he was awake, Johnny was a pure-and-pute old bastard. Those sharp cynicism made him invincible. However, claustrophobia and drunkenness put him in an embarrassing situation. No one around for him to taunt, and there was no one in his head to let him teach how to behave. Johnny had to face the person he avoided to face all day and all night: Himself.

Johnny lowered his head and saw V's hand resting on his thigh. The delicate fingers were slightly bent, and the fingertips were pointing provocatively towards the inner thighs, pinched into his flesh, leave a few folds on his tight leather pants. V's hand, V‘s here? He tried to reach that hand with his hand, but found that it moved away from his thigh disappointingly as soon as he moved. He fell into that awkward atmosphere again, until the elevator trembled like its last breath, and the double-opening door squeaked and slid, he staggered up and fled. There was still a delirious voice in the back of his head shouting, V? He had just seen V clearly in the elevator. But fuck him, even if now give him ten V, he won't go back to that motherfucker stinky tin box!

The door to the apartment is not closed. It doesn't matter, he doesn't have any valuable possessions here. In all likelihood, the kid next door came to him in the evening and asked him some guitar questions. Johnny walked in and found that the window next to the living room was also open, and the wind came in from the other end of the small space, blew through the corridor, and then slapped on his hot cheeks. He was a little awake, and then he remembered looking for V. He rummaged at home for a while but found nothing. Just as he raised his head irritably, he saw a familiar face flashing past the innermost part of the bathroom.

What the hell?

Johnny rushed in immediately, and finally, he saw the face of his former lover in the mirror. The face was now red and sweaty, and it looked so lifelike in Johnny's own drunk eyes. He started with lips first, because the color there was too eye-catching. He put his finger on his lips and saw that V also put his finger on his own lips, and his short nails were digging into the gap between the lips. Johnny felt his lips hurt and felt his fingertips, and felt the rough touch of stubble from his own finger pulp. He saw the lover in the mirror frowned. Yes, always had this look, I was never a gentle lover, Johnny thought. He saw V put the finger covering his lips into his mouth, and tasted the bitter taste from his own tongue.

The sirens screaming from a distance came from outside the window, and the room became colder, and the fluorescent light in the bathroom was dimming yellow. V was standing there, in front of Johnny, staring at Johnny through a layer of reflective electronic screen, one hand holding on the edge of the sink, and the other hand with the finger half inserted in his mouth, the end wet with saliva, glowing dangerously in the light. His hair is messy and looks like he’s gonna fall down at any time. Johnny got hard. As soon as he was about to take care of his dick, he saw V in the mirror also unbuckle his belt. He simply sat down on the sink, with one leg supporting the opposite wall and the other hanging in the air. He tried this posture several times before he found his balance and did not fall from the top to the floor.

He and V are now sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, with a thick electronic screen between them, and a cold touch on his arms. He can see V’s face close at hand by slanting his gaze, showing a look like a desperate dog begging for his master’s pity that he has never seen before. He must have drunk too much, feeling that his self-esteem has been shaken in some way, he deliberately refused to look at his own body, turned his head and looked deep into the mirror, where there was a picture he most desperate to see:

The man in the mirror is sitting with one leg bent, the side of his knee is leaning against the mirror, his palm, tightly covered on his bulging crotch, and his crotch moves up and down restlessly against his palm like the way virgins seek pleasure, rubbing his penis against the hand pressing on it through the cloth, squeezing it to produce a strange and improper pleasure, which stimulates Johnny’s brain and transforms into a series of intermittent moans overflowing his throat. Almost at the same time, his lover also moaned, the voice louder than his own, echoing in his ears. In the mirror, the man's hand covering his crotch had become a slow scratching and rubbing, and Johnny didn't need to look to know that under those cloth it must be wet.

For the next few minutes, Johnny seemed to be lost in his thoughts. Only blurry images and light flashed before his eyes. He felt that he lifted his hips up and sat down, stumbling his pants to his ankles. The hard and cold marble surface of the sink squeezed his hips, almost like an unkind touch that made him unsettled. The surrounding temperature is getting lower and lower, and the room is as cold as an ice cave, but the man in the mirror still looks hot, looking angrily craving for something, the skin on the chest and the roots of the thighs still glows attractively.

Johnny saw him hold his penis into his palm with the hand that was rubbing his crotch. The palm was hot, making Johnny harden again. Johnny saw the man in the mirror using his palm to please his own penis. Before this action was repeated several times, Johnny actually felt a slight lightness and a few cramp in his lower abdomen, this is a precursor to ejaculation, not sure if it's because of the alcohol, "Fuck..." He scolded, disappointed in himself. He quickly shifted his gaze to the shape of the man’s tight abdomen and the side of the body showing the ribs from under the muscles. The skin that was obviously not well taken care of was covered with scars and bruises. When the man ran his fingers through those imperfections Johnny felt a long-lasting sting.

But Johnny didn't want to stop, he wanted to see V come in orgasm, in front of him. Fortunately, the excitement accelerated the blood flow on his body, which more or less metabolized some alcohol that made him dizzy. He vaguely remembered what kind of teasing this body needs most, and got up and went to the luggage he brought. He found a dildo, re-sit on the sink in front of the mirror, moved his butt, and then stuffed the dildo into his body from the groove of the sink. The pleasure exploded in his mind, and the body in the mirror twisted restlessly. Johnny felt a soreness in his chest due to holding his breath for too long, and his penis was still held in his hand.

He looked at the phantom in the mirror and suddenly had the urge to smash it. The sweat-covered body was almost like burning under the light and refraction, Johnny's ears are buzzing, and the blood vessels in his forehead twitching. He watched his non-existent lover fiddle with his own penis almost roughly and thought to himself, what a pitiful and pathetic sex this was. Johnny couldn't even find a suitable word to humiliate himself. He can only get excited under such a scene forever. In this weird, evasive, drunk half-asleep, he barely caught a trace of what he had with his former lover.

In the end, this was just a self-blasphemy of over-commitment, and any bystander would think he was an out-and-out narcissist. Johnny had an orgasm in the midst of this thought. The orgasm lasted painfully for a long time. When he recovered, he found himself sitting on his cold semen with trembling shoulders, sobbing. His limp penis was still held in his palm, the electronic screen mirror had already turned-off automatically long ago, replaced by the almost physical darkness and emptiness.

(The End)


End file.
